The present invention relates to a cellular phone and automatic program update method and, more particularly, to a cellular phone and automatic program update method used therefor to update an incorporated program in accordance with a program downloaded from a server.
Conventionally, in a cellular phone, a program becomes complex along with an increase in number of functions, so that bugs are sometimes found in the program after the cellular phone appears on the market. Additionally, in order to upgrade the function, the program is sometimes updated after the cellular phone appears on the market. To cope with these situations, a cellular phone having a function of downloading and updating a program via a radio channel has been available. This type of cellular phone is disclosed in, e.g., reference 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-152821).
Recently, in order to avoid centralized processing in a server for controlling program downloading, a scheme of notifying a user's cellular phone of downloadable time and downloading the program at the time selected by the user is used.
However, by the scheme of notifying the user's cellular phone of the downloadable time and downloading the program at the time selected by the user, when the program needs to be updated, the user must operate the cellular phone at the time selected by him/her, resulting in a deterioration in operability.